


Why? Yes.

by cnaught



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angry bois, Angst and Humor, Clueless Otabek, Communicating is difficult, First Kiss, Inferiority Complex Otabek, M/M, Rated For Language Mostly, Yurabek sounds better, Yuri is probably 17 or 18, i feel like that's a lost cause, otayuri - Freeform, yurabek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-11 08:31:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13520475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cnaught/pseuds/cnaught
Summary: “You can’t justdothat,” he bites.At least Yuri doesn’t look scared, now, but with him it’s hard to know whether that spark of anger means normalcy or an impending conflagration. “Why not?” His tone is controlled; it sounds like he’s daring Otabek to say the wrong thing. He tugs his sleeve out of Otabek’s grip.“Because.” This is so stupid, so obvious, that it’s hard for Otabek to even find the words to explain it. “Because you’re Yuri fucking Plisetsky."In which Otabek doesn't respond very well to being surprised, and Yuri does not understand why the hell he is surprised at all.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this is the first thing I've written for YoI. After face-planting real hard down the Otayuri rabbit hole. Hiiii.  
> It took kind of a drastic tonal shift in the middle, so I broke it into two chapters. This is what I set out to write, the angsty angry part. The next part is longer and stupider (and funnier). I can't write smut, otherwise there might have been smut between chapters. Read between the lines at your discretion I guess.  
> The setting is really indistinct. Because I am laaaaaazyyyyyy. I imagine they're at a competition, on the hotel roof, or something.  
> Comments and concrit are loved. Thanks for reading. I hope it's worth your time.

Yuri breaks the kiss, and pulls back enough to see Otabek’s face. The way Yuri’s expression changes, in that moment, is like the sick feeling of watching someone bite it hard under the lights of an important competition.

“Fuck,” Yuri breathes, and it’s worse. Worse than when he was sixteen, with his body changing under him, and he’d stumbled and shook so badly through his performance at Skate Canada that he hadn’t even qualified for that year’s final, and Otabek had sat in the hallway outside Yuri’s hotel room for hours, listening to him sob and scream and finally, worst of all, go silent. Otabek had taken gold there, and hated it; it felt like betrayal.

“I’m sorry, Beka,” Yuri mutters, sounding just like a teenager who thinks that two minutes of rough skating has ruined his life forever. He pulls back, about to flee, and god damn it if Otabek is going to do this again from the other side of a locked door, so he grasps Yuri’s sleeve. There’s only the length of their two arms between them.

“Wait, Yura.” His voice sounds strange, strangled, and suddenly he doesn’t know which one of them is crashing and which is watching in horror from behind the boards. “Fuck’s sake.” He watches Yuri, waiting for any of this to start making sense, but Yuri’s just staring back at him, blank and terrified, like he doesn’t know yet whether it’s just a sprain or a career-ending injury, and this is all such nonsense that it’s starting to piss Otabek off. “You can’t just _do_ that,” he bites.

At least Yuri doesn’t look scared, now, but with him it’s hard to know whether that spark of anger means normalcy or an impending conflagration. “Why not?” His tone is controlled; it sounds like he’s daring Otabek to say the wrong thing. He tugs his sleeve out of Otabek’s grip.

“Because.” This is so stupid, so obvious, that it’s hard for Otabek to even find the words to explain it. “Because you’re Yuri fucking Plisetsky. You’re the best god damned figure skater in the world, you’re unbelievably talented, and _gorgeous_ , and — and I’m.” Fuck.

“Fishing for compliments?” Yuri snaps.

“No!” He won’t say, _I’m no one, from nowhere, I’m a hick from a backwater country, I’m stodgy and boring and the only reason I’m still even in this sport is because I’m too fucking stubborn to leave it to the people who are good at it, like you._ Even for Yuri, he is not going to admit any of that out loud; even a stubborn, boring, backwater hick has pride. He’s furious at Yuri for being so fucking clueless as to bring it up, even in thought.

Yuri’s arms are crossed over his slender chest. “Is that it?” His voice is like poison and velvet, blades and ice. “Because that’s the stupidest fucking garbage I’ve ever heard.” He steps forward. “And, you know, I train with Viktor, so. I know stupid garbage.” He’s standing very close. Otabek grits his teeth, glares at Yuri’s left shoulder.

“Otabek.” It isn’t a challenge; it isn’t a dare. His voice sounds like … being very small, beside the ocean in Barcelona at midnight, _I just wanted to get your advice about it, is all_ , and that’s what makes Otabek look up. Of course in his eyes is the fucking dare. _Are you gonna do it? Or are you not?_ “I’m going to kiss you,” Yuri says, in that tone that always leads to Yakov muttering about impossible skaters sending him to an early grave, “because you’re my best friend, and you’re objectively awesome, and I’ve wanted to kiss you since like the first day we met.” He unfolds an arm to touch Otabek’s face, gentle, careful in a way that might surprise someone who doesn’t know Yuri well. His fingers brush Otabek’s cheekbone and the corner of his jaw like a question. “And none of your stupid fucking reasons,” he murmurs, and it’s extremely hard to focus on the words when he is so close that Otabek can feel his damn breath, “were that you don’t want to. So.” He laughs a nervous puff of air right onto Otabek’s mouth, and then he kisses him.

Otabek knows what is happening this time, he’s not shocked into stillness. But none of it has answered the basic, essential question, _why? why me? why, when you are_ you _and I am…?_ So he asks with his mouth on Yuri’s, with his fingers tangled in Yuri’s hair, his palm on Yuri’s back pressing them together, he asks with his tongue, with his teeth, he asks all down the length of them, _why?_ and, deeper than that, he asks, _really?_

Yuri answers. As his lips open, as his chin angles, _yes._ As his long fingers cradle Otabek’s face and slide to the back of his skull, _yes._ His grip on Otabek’s waist, painfully sharp, _yes._ Their hips almost flush, until he shifts his weight, edges a knee between Otabek’s legs and leans in, the gasp and groan, _yes, yes, fuck_ , **_yes._**


	2. Chapter 2

By the time they stop Otabek feels like he might never catch his breath again. He has no more questions. His head rests against Yuri’s shoulder. His fingers are still on Yuri’s scalp; he’s really messed up his long, lovely hair. Oh well. It hadn’t been Otabek’s idea.

“Fuck’s sake, Beka,” Yuri pants. “What’s your fucking problem? You scared the shit out of me.” Little, hysterical bubbles of laughter rise from his chest, burst on his tongue. “I thought — fuck.”

Otabek turns his face toward Yuri’s, an incidental almost-nuzzle on his shoulder. “You shouldn’t surprise people like that, Yura,” he says, solemn. “Not everyone reacts well.”

“Surprise?” The hysteria is stronger. Otabek hopes Yuri will work through it without needing to throw his arms up and pace, or make some other dramatic gesture; Otabek is very comfortable and doesn’t want to move. “Beka. What the actual fuck?” Yuri pauses, like he’s waiting for an answer to his obviously rhetorical question. When Otabek doesn’t provide one, he huffs and tries again. “Were you really — How could you be surprised?”

Otabek thinks that that question is also essentially rhetorical. But he has the uneasy feeling that Yuri is going to punch him, or at least make him move off of Yuri’s shoulder, if he doesn’t say something. So he shrugs, awkwardly, because Yuri’s forearm is still on his shoulder, and mutters, “Because it never occurred to me.” He shifts his head, another nuzzle, and murmurs into the side of Yuri’s neck, “Because you’re obviously out of my league.”

“Fuck off,” Yuri mutters distractedly, “we’re literally in the same league,” and his fingers find the back of Otabek’s head again, drawing patterns in the fine short fuzz. Otabek hums his approval, presses his mouth to Yuri’s skin. Then Yuri’s fingers find Otabek’s longer hair and _yank_ , and though in some situations that would be hot, right now it only serves to jerk Otabek’s head back, banging his chin against Yuri’s clavicle, causing Otabek to draw back enough to make eye contact and glower.

“Otabek.” Yuri meets his gaze, weirdly serious, with the slightest edge of something like panic just in the corner of his eyes. “I have been, like, hard-core flirting with you, for like a _year_.”

Otabek blinks, glower forgotten. “Um.”

“ _Beka._ ”

Otabek tries to scour his memory, the past year’s worth of Skype calls, competition meet-ups, endless texts and frankly more social media activity than he can keep up with, for anything that felt like… this. There’s nothing. “Uh.”

“Are you serious right now.”

“I’m always serious,” he responds. There was _nothing._ No clue. Only their usual friendship, only the easy affection and unguarded closeness that had always been theirs, since that first weekend in Barcelona when Yuri Plisetsky had stepped out of abstract memory and into a living, breathing, real person, loud and demanding and unspeakably dear.

“You must have had _some_ —” Yuri sounds just this side of desperate. “You said.” He blushes, which does nothing to help Otabek keep his train of thought on track. “You said I was gorgeous,” Yuri mutters, embarrassed. “You must have _thought_ …”

“God’s sake, Yura, that’s like saying the sky is blue. It doesn’t mean I had a personal….” Wait. “Um.” He feels the warmth rise on his face. “You, uh. You said. That you wanted to kiss me. Since the first day we met.” If there’s any consolation for how hard he is surely blushing right now, it’s that Yuri is blushing harder, all down his neck and to the tips of his ears.

“Yeah,” Yuri whispers. He looks like a damn tomato. And he’s still beautiful. God damn him.

“Yura,” Otabek murmurs, “I wish you’d _said_ something.”

“Fuck _you_ ,” Yuri wails, shoving him away so they both stumble, but Yuri is laughing helplessly. “God damn you, Altin, I can’t fucking believe you! What the hell kind of friend texts you good morning and good night every god damned day even though you’re three time zones apart?”

“We do,” Otabek replies, brushing himself off. “We have for years. That’s not flirting.”

Yuri groans in frustration. He tries to finger-comb the knots that Otabek made out of his hair. “Friends don’t message each other multiple times a week saying _I miss you_ or _I’m thinking of you_ , you fucking weirdo!”

“Why not? I did miss you. And think of you. Why shouldn’t I believe you felt the same?”

“You’re fucking impossible, oh my god.” Yuri can’t stop grinning. “What about the pictures?”

“Which ones?”

“Beka, I swear to god. I sent you so damn many mirror selfies, in the sluttiest outfits Mila and I could come up with, saying like _what do you think?_ _winky-face_. Beka, no one uses winky-face unless they are trying to be suggestive. Literally no one. Even my granddad knows that.”

“I didn’t know that.” He pauses. “I thought it was odd that you would want my advice on fashion, since you know I only have about three distinct outfits, but…”

“Oh, was that _odd?_ Was it?” Yuri grinds his teeth. “Skyping you without a shirt on, in the middle of the goddamn night? When I _know_ it’s three hours later there, so it’s even more the middle of the night for you?”

“We’re athletes. Being self-conscious about our bodies isn’t —”

“It’s a _bedroom,_ not a fucking locker room, you ass!”

“— and you know I keep odd hours sometimes.” He shrugs. With context, maybe it makes _more_ sense, but. “It’s not that strange.”

Yuri’s eyes are burning into him. “What about _those_ pictures?”

“You send a lot of pictures, Yura. Be specific.”

Yuri steps toward him, the look on his face mocking and utterly exasperated and fond. “The bed selfies,” he murmurs. “Where I’m in my bed, without clothes. With my hair loose and messy across the pillow.” He flicks that hair over his shoulder, drawing the focus of Otabek’s entire attention. “And I’m making bedroom eyes at you. You know.” Green eyes rake over Otabek, make him shiver. “It’s like… here I am in bed, I wish you were here with me.” Yuri smiles, just in the corner of his mouth. Otabek is struggling to pay attention to the words, and not just his lips. “Tell me,” Yuri places a hand on the side of Otabek’s neck, “O-ta-bek,” drawing out the syllables like he wants to feel the shape of each one on his tongue, in his mouth, “is that like something that a _friend_ would send you?”

Otabek, trying to remember how to speak, licks his lips. Yuri’s sharp eyes follow his tongue. Unhelpful. “You, ah.” He sounds so breathless; maybe he should be embarrassed. They’ve barely touched each other yet. “You never had good boundaries,” he points out.

Yuri stops. Otabek wonders if he’s going to be yelled at again. Then Yuri’s face just breaks, and he’s laughing, hysterical, collapsing onto him, burying his face in Otabek’s shoulder as he hiccup-giggle-snorts uncontrollably. Otabek reaches up to pet soothing circles between Yuri’s shaking shoulder blades, to smooth down his hair.

“All right?” he asks, after the shaking has settled.

“Yeah.” Yuri straightens up enough to bonk his forehead against Otabek’s. There are tears of mirth on his face, in the corners of his eyes. Otabek carefully, conscientiously starts to wipe them away. “Yeah. I just.” He giggles. “Next time I want to seduce you, I’ll send a formal invitation. Spell it out clearly.” He sniffs, snorts. “ _You are cordially invited_ …”

“I’ll be sure to RSVP,” Otabek promises.

Yuri laughs. “You’d better.”

It’s much nicer to kiss Yuri when he’s grinning against your skin, loose and warm and easy, than when he’s angry and tense with nerves. Otabek thinks he will definitely RSVP to that seduction.

 

 

[Post-Script: A sample of Yuri’s unsuccessful flirting]

 

**Yuri:** [attachment:image]

**Yuri:** _what do you think? ;)_

**Otabek:** _Looks good, but remember a jacket. It’s February_

**Yuri:** _if only I had someone to keep me warm… ;)_

**Otabek:** _That’s what jackets are for_

**Otabek:** _And sweaters_

**Otabek:** _Clothes in general_

**Otabek:** _don’t mind me, I’m old and don’t understand fashion_

**Otabek:** _Hope you have fun tonight :)_

 

**Yuri:** [attachment:image]

**Yuri:** _hmm, I think this one would look better on your floor ;)_

**Otabek:** _I don’t even know where to find clothes like that in Almaty_

**Otabek:** _Temir would know_

**Otabek:** _Not really my style_

**Otabek:** _Looks good on you though :)_

 

 

[Post-Post-Script: Bed Selfie]

 

They are curled around each other while Otabek flicks through his phone, searching for something. He finds it, and nudges Yuri to show him. “Yura,” he asks. “Is this one of those bed selfies you were talking about?”

Yuri glances up from his own phone, and grins. “Yes. Jesus, Beka. How could you not tell?”

Otabek gazes at it. “How could I not tell you were flirting.” His tone is flat. More stone-faced than usual. Yuri’s grin flickers.

“Yeah. Obviously.”

“From this photo that you sent at —“ he makes a show of checking “ — ten thirty at night, your time, showing you in bed. Half asleep. Captioned _sweet dreams_.”

Yuri squawks. “Fuck you, half-asleep! That’s not —“ He looks at it again, and flushes. “You ass. That’s not a sleep face. That’s a sex face. Obviously.”

Otabek tilts his head. “Your eyes are kind of half-closed.”

“Hooded. Sexy.”

“And you’re smiling. Sleepily.”

“Sexily!” Yuri groans and turns away. “What-the-fuck- _ever_ , Beka. It’s obvious, and you’re an idiot for not seeing it.”

Otabek looks from the phone in his hand, to the back of Yuri’s head, turned away from him. He sighs and drops the phone. “Okay, Yura. If you say so.”

“Shut up,” Yuri grumbles. Otabek laughs into the back of his shoulder.

 

Otabek had responded to the selfie thus:

_If you braid your hair before sleeping it will be easier to comb in the morning_

_Sleep well, Yura_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My headcanon of clueless-Otabek is heavily influenced by the lovely and hilarious "yuri can't even with otabek sometimes" series, by 777335. I also headcanon that he is just like 1000% unaware of how he comes across to other people. Thus the line in the previous part where he thinks of himself as stodgy and boring, and the thought that he just kind of doesn't care about clothes. Which is its own kind of cool, of course.  
> The "you are cordially invited to a seduction" line is from Neil Gaiman. He was talking about seducing writers. I think it works for anyone who just cannot pick up a clue.  
> It feels right to me that someone who is so direct and straightforward might have difficulty interpreting any unexpected flirting that is more subtle than "hey, let's fuck!" The idea of Yuri *desperately trying* and Otabek *just not getting it at all* is hilarious to me, so this is pretty self-indulgent. I'll be glad if anyone else gets a lil giggle from it.


End file.
